No One Will Ever Make America Great Again

Milo introduces himself as, “the most fabulous supervillain on the Internet,” so calling a Presidential candidate “daddy” is consistent with his own quirky brand of camp conservatism.

I don’t know of anyone else who calls Trump “daddy.” But when I see my peers caught up in stadium-style slave wave that is ready to crown a shifty, wheeling and dealing New York City businessman as America’s savior and “emperor god-king”…

…“daddy” does seem uncomfortably appropriate. The incontinent progressive mainstream would have you imagine Donald the “daddy” as the paternal leader — or Führer, as they put it once upon a time in Deutschland. However, Donald Trump is no artist, and his vision for American Greatness seems to be far less grand, let alone “great.”

Trump, at best, may guide and preside over — as lucky Presidents do — a temporary upswing in the economy. He may be able to negotiate some modest changes to discourage outsourcing and encourage American production.

This will be denounced as isolationism — an arcane and taboo form of common sense that involves leaders prioritizing the interests of the people they were charged with leading above the interests of other people.

This novel isolationism may even extend to withdrawing from virtually one-sided military commitments all around the world. He may even, as he’s promised, build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. It’s common sense that a nation cannot function as a nation without borders. Borders are what distinguish one nation and government from another. Open borders are a threat to national security — whether you’re worried about keeping out terrorists or cartels.

Building walls, reducing one-sided liabilities, setting things up so the country can be more self-sufficient…this is all good and necessary national housekeeping.

But what Trump can’t do is fix the systemic problems in America.

He can’t bring Americans together as a singular people who share a common culture and destiny. That ship has sailed.

Or rather, it never sailed. The country wouldn’t be tearing itself apart internally over racial politics if Lincoln had managed to encourage emancipated slaves to colonize other less white countries — the strategy he had long favored. Over seven years into the administration of the America’s first black president, racial tension in America is higher than it was during the Bush presidency. As a majority of blacks are expected to vote for Hillary, campaigns like #blacklivesmatter will only gain momentum during a Trump presidency. There will be more riots, and, as the smart Gregory Hood once suggested to me in person, if Trump wins, the left may just “start the revolution for us.” (That’s probably the most interesting pro-Trump argument I’ve heard.)

If Trump builds a wall, it may keep new illegal immigrants out, but it’s far too late to turn the demographic tide. Mexican immigration to America didn’t start during the Obama presidency. It started generations ago. The majority of the growth in the hispanic population comes from births within the United States — not from the aquathoners of the Rio Grande. Hispanics are already the majority in New Mexico and California, and nationwide, non-hispanic white births are now officially a minority.

No matter what he does, Donald Trump is never going to make America white again.

Non-hispanic whites will be a minority in any future version of the United States.

What does that have to do with greatness?

Well, it depends what “greatness” means to you.

I asked a Mexican-American Trump supporter, born and raised here, what he thought a great America would look like in 2017, and he said, “Like the 1950s only with more technology. Like in Back to the Future.”

That’s probably not far from how a lot of the electorate imagines a great America, actually.

He went on to say that Trump wants a strong military, wants America to stop getting pushed around, wants to stop political correctness, and wants everything to be made here in America. That all sounds pretty good.

But what is the appeal of the 1950s? Why do people still see it as a kind of American golden age?

We have the technology, but how do we get Back to the Future?The post-War era is remembered, picturesquely, as a time of national unity and great opportunity. The American people were far less diverse in racial background and religious belief. The sexes were still largely segregated, and sex roles were clearly defined. At least as it is told — since I was born in 1974 — the 1950s were a time when most people knew what was expected of them. The American Dream of buying a car and getting married and owning a home and having a family was easily accessible to any white guy who was willing to work hard. It probably wasn’t exactly like Leave it to Beaver, but it was far closer to that than American life has ever been sense.

If America was great in the 50s, it was great in part due to its homogeneity. There’s no need to make the argument that it was better because it was white. That would only seem true if you were white — though you could probably find some older black and hispanic men who would argue that it was just better all around. It’s enough to say that if you believe America was “greater” in the 50s, many of the reasons it was greater were the direct consequence of the fact that most of the people in the United States had a similar ethnic heritage and related religious and philosophical beliefs. Homogeneity creates a high-trust, comfortable, unified society.

In the 1950s, the heads of many American households had returned from fighting in World War II with a strong sense of national identity and solidarity. They’d just won a war together, and their sense of national pride was at a high that probably hadn’t been reached since the founding of the nation. A total war against another formidable nation like Russia or China is probably the only force strong enough to unify the bickering factions within America.

The threat posed by Islamic radicals is too ethereal, too distant, too easy to explain away as an aberration. The occasional nut-job blowing himself up or hijacking a plane or shooting a bunch of people isn’t an attack on a harbor by a foreign air force. It’s not an army conquering allied nations. It’s a problem that mass enlistment and mobilization probably couldn’t even solve — unless Trump is going to make America a great conquering Empire that slaughters, subjugates, seizes assets, appropriates resources, and colonizes acquired territories — like a properly great Empire. The other world governments would never tolerate this, even if Trump could somehow rally the American people together, clamoring for it.

Trump can never be Caesar or Hitler or Napoleon or even Mussolini, because the American people aren’t Romans or Germans or French or Italian. They are all and none of those things. They aren’t really anything. They don’t have a shared identity or culture, and their shared history has to do with a pioneering past and the establishment of a form of government that would be recognizable to its founders only as a grotesque perversion of abstract ideals that seemed like a good idea at the time, in a very different world. If some political necromancer resurrected them to do annotate a new edition of the Declaration of Independence, they’d be footnoting the hell out of groaners like “…all men are created equal.”The only culture Americans truly share is a culture of commerce. They identify with each other across racial, ethnic and sexual boundaries through a common love of products, of musical performers, of movies and television shows and clothing brands and sports teams. This culture of commerce is only capable of inspiring a national unity as cheap and disposable as the products that characterize it. If you could get everyone to be as fanatically devoted to the country as Apple users are to Apple, you might have something approaching a national culture, but the nation is divided over Apple and PC in rather the same way it is divided between Republicans and Democrats or gun users and gun prohibitionists.

The people inhabiting the United States are so deeply and irreconcilably divided over so many issues that the national identity is fragmenting. As Sebastian Junger observed in his recent book, Tribe, people on the opposite sides of issues no longer consider themselves part of the same group trying to come to an agreement. They openly revile each other. He also noted, correctly, that, “People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united very long.” The United States have been united for too long. People who don’t belong together and who don’t want to work together — who revile each other — remain stuck together because they can’t imagine a way out, because they don’t know what else to do. It’s like a bad marriage or an abusive relationship. Even more than that, commercial and legal interests between culturally and geographically divided states and regions are so deeply intertwined, and have been for so long, that separating them would be like separating conjoined twins.

Most of the states are larger than European countries, but the United States isn’t the European Union. European nations have individual cultures, histories, identities, social institutions and infrastructures that pre-date the relatively short experiment of the European Union by hundreds of years or more. American states grew and evolved together. I live in Oregon, which was a sparsely populated territory that included the entire State of Washington and Idaho until 1853, and it only entered the union as a state in 1859. It has very little history of its own that predates the American Civil War. There was no government to speak of in the territory before 1843 — when it was truly a “free country.” By comparison, when the Scots talk of seceding from the UK, it should be noted that the Scottish have a collective history that’s well over a thousand years old, and they’ve been in an on-again, off-again relationship with the Brits for about 400 years. France and Germany and Spain have been recognized as separate and distinct places since the Roman Empire. The Danes have been Danes since before they started raiding English churches.

If European countries exit the EU and the European people and their leaders are able to take greater control over the rule and the destinies of their nations, dramatic change is possible, and it can move quickly. European countries have a scale that’s far easier to manage, upgrade and administer.

The United States may be “too big to fail,” since it seems like it should have collapsed economically from debt long ago. But if so, it may also be too big to change. Progressives and Europeans have always seemed unable to grasp the difference between operating the government of a fun-size nation that’s smaller than West Virginia, and administering a continent-wide country of 300 million. Small governments are far nimbler.

American voters are universally disgusted by what they see as the inability of government to actually commit to and accomplish anything. That’s why they are attracted to big dreamers like Bernie and big talkers like Donald Trump. But just as Obama’s Obamacare healthcare reform became such a compromise of compromises that it can barely be described, and a president elected in part to end foreign wars ended up starting several wars, future leaders can be expected to be rendered essentially impotent by inside influences and the checks and balances that have become front and rear brakes.

No matter how regal their helmet of blonde hair, no matter how finely they swagger.

To the extent that America was ever great, it was great as a symbol of opportunity and freedom and a pioneering spirit.

But there is no more free land to settle — you just rent it from the bank and the state until you sell off your interest to fund your nursing home death watch.

Freedom’s just a feel-good buzzword. Americans are more closely watched and regulated than they ever were under British rule — and the system of regulations and surveillance will only increase no matter who is president.

Hey, old guys — do you remember that time in your life when the amount of laws and rules and regulations the government imposes on you actually decreased?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

In terms of opportunity, maybe Trump will facilitate an economic boost and a reinvigoration of American manufacturing. It could happen. But the generation that’s coming of age — the bright kids that Trump is going to need to help make an American business boom — well, they are tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to an educational and lending system that can only honestly be described as predatory. That system has spoiled their minds with unrealistic expectations while dumbing them down with highly politicized, low substance classes and administrations that encourage them to tantrum whenever they hear a contradictory viewpoint.

There are hundreds of reasons why America won’t be able to come together until it falls apart — until the union fractures into smaller, more manageable and less easily corruptible parts, and different groups people start the process of constructing distinct, exclusive cultures and positive identities.

In fact, I’ve had to edit this essay down twice now, because it’s a book-length topic. I’m never going to write that book. Even writing about American politics for a couple days in a row makes me feel the way I do after I’ve spent too long gossiping about someone who I think is a loser or an unredeemable asshole. Sure, I have the satisfaction of being right, but they still got another piece of my life.

However, I think it’s important, at this stage, to note that there are three kinds of Trump supporters that I see among my friends and readers.

Trump the Troll

Friends of mine who haven’t bothered to vote in years have actually considered registering to vote for Trump because they think a Trump presidency would be hilarious.

Most of them probably won’t actually take the time to register or vote for the lulz, but the fact that they’d even consider voting for someone, “just because it would be funny,” shows the extent to which they’ve abandoned faith in the possibility of a legitimate representative government. I don’t think the people who were blindsided by Trump’s popularity understand how big his, “everything is fucked, but this is going to be funny to watch” numbers are.

If Trump is elected, invest in popcorn. Say what you want about Trump, but his ability to confound and disorient the media and the political establishment is astounding. He misdirects and redirects like a master magician.

Both true believers and dispossessed supporters of trolldom marvel together at Trump’s cavalier refusal to be cowed by politically correct cry-bullies, social justice warriors and progressive church ladies. He’s been equally dismissive of the humorless prudes and the pudgy neocon war pigs who have dominated the Republican party. Scorned and bitchy, they’re still trying to find a way to push him out and replace him with another guaranteed loser like Ted Cruz.

Trump says, or seems to say, the kinds of things that keyboard truth-tellers have been typing furiously through their painfully witty pseudonyms for years. He frustrates the establishment’s liars and hypocrites by paying them no mind. He breaks the rules. He controls and re-frames every discussion. He’s the ultimate player, and he’s playing everyone like a boss.

Trump, The Least Worst Option

More moderate, pragmatic friends — who aren’t quite out at the ideological edges of the crumbling Empire with me, licking their lips with sanpaku eyeballs in the “worse is better” camp — see Trump as a way to buy time.

He won’t go after guns, and he’ll probably keep things practical men care about from being disturbed too much. Also, see Trump the Troll. Whatever he does, it’s probably going to be fun to watch. Even a practical man can enjoy that.

God-King Emperor Trump: Savior of America, Europe and The Free World

Because Trump seems unstoppable, because he trolls the establishment and the media so effortlessly, because he breaks the rules, because he reframes every discussion, because he blows off the power of people and institutions that millions of men have been afraid to stand up to — some guys out there really do seem to believe that Trump can do anything.

Like that image of a reanimated Ronald Reagan firing a gun while riding a velociraptor that’s carrying an American flag, Donald Trump has taken on an impossibly heroic stature in their minds, and seems capable of doing things that no president of the United States is actually empowered to do. It’s like they think he’s going to walk into Congress, give his first State of the Union Address, drop the mic and then all of the conservacucks, the castrati, the tokens and that bitch from California are all going to get to work like busy little bees.

Of course that’s not going to happen.

What is going to happen — what would happen, I should say, because I still think Hillary is going to win, though Trump is a wild card no one could predict — is that Trump is going to say a lot of fun things, and he’s going to look like a boss doing it, but the establishment and reality are going to get together and block about 60-80 percent of his agenda. During that process, he would point fingers and sidestep responsibility and restate what he meant and dismiss or diminish his critics in the brilliant way he does. And his supporters would still feel good supporting him, because he would still be as I’ve said of Putin, the corrupt leader America wants instead of the corrupt leader they currently have.

He would make white men, and men in general, proud to be Americans again. They would be proud of their President and his hot wife and his capable, articulate sons and they’d wear American flag boxer shorts 20% more often — without a hint of irony.

The sun would be shining and the birds would be singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”until a bald fucking eagle swooped down from the sky and said, “Fuck off! I’m America, Bitch! Here’s some fucking Metallica, you fucking queers!”

Trump brand hot dogs would be barbecued and blondes in star-spangled bikinis would model the latest very nearly automatic weapons while washing red, white and blue sports cars made right here in U.S. of A.

And in four to eight years, all of those systemic problems would still be there. No real change would have occurred. Big business would get bigger. Consumers would be even more consumer-oriented. The demographic changes would still be underway, and the American people still wouldn’t have much more in common than flags and hot dogs. In fact, it’s very likely that, as I mentioned above, a Trump presidency would energize progressives and give them back the romance of rebellion, which has only recently been shifting toward various reactionary causes — as it became impossible to deny that progressivism and globalism and multiculturalism and feminism had all become establishment positions among the media and the spoiled classes alike. Progressives already have the entertainment infrastructure and most of the talent on their side, and Trump will inspire a sense of urgency that could touch off a mini-renaissance of art and film and music to double down on the left’s already ubiquitous narratives — all made by people convinced they are saving the world from some new caesarism or creeping fascism that would actually require a complete dismantling of the American political system, starting with the Constitution to come close to being an overt reality. It would probably require Trump leading a military coup…which seems improbable at best.

Still, if Trump were to win the Presidency, the left would have a “power” to “fight” and “speak truth to.” Recently they’ve been in the embarrassing-to-watch position of angrily asking each other for things they more or less already have — or nit-picking each other to death over increasingly bizarre mutations of their “liberal” agenda.

“No one is free until trans-pig amputees with smallpox can serve freely and openly in the special forces — which should be abolished anyway because violence is wrong!”

If Trump wins the Presidency, he may make progressivism seem sensible and moderate again.

I’ve even wondered if Brexit and the Trump surge aren’t placating moves, to keep white men from feeling completely disenfranchised…until it is too late. Until the demographic change is complete. Until they are safely in the minority. Until their sons become even more passive and androgynous from estrogenic chemicals and additives and feminist indoctrination and being coddled by overzealous school administrators and overprotective parents. Until almost no one knows any useful skills anymore and everyone is completely helpless without a handheld computer. Until the distribution of wealth is so dramatic that public opinion really doesn’t matter anymore, and elites can simply dole out resources to their workers, whose lives they will manage from cradle to grave. It would be pretty brilliant, wouldn’t it?Wouldn’t it be perfectly shrewd for elites to convince the group of men who is the biggest threat to them that they are back “in charge” again, to keep them working and propping up the system like good little boy scouts, until it doesn’t matter what they think anymore…

I’m no longer foolish enough to believe that my opinion, or even my vote — if I were registered to vote — will have any influence on who has been selected to become the next President of the United States. But I’d stillprefer Hillary Clinton. Specifically because she represents everything I, and most of my readers, hate about what America has become. She’ll really put the nanny in nanny state. When asked about her approval ratings with white men, she has the typically dismissive feminist shoulder shrug that says, “I guess they’d better get used to how things are going to be now.” She’s shown that she will throw any man in uniform under a bus, or a tank, if it serves her own political agenda. She doesn’t care about your rights, or freedom of speech, or the 2nd Amendment, or — apparently — national security or classified information. She and her husband have made their careers pandering to minority (soon to be majority) groups and feeding into race-baiting politics. She gets away with every illegal thing she does, and like her husband, nothing really sticks to her, though she is widely regarded as a career liar of the first order. And if she wins, she’ll ride into office hailed as the first female President, just as her predecessor was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up for work and being black.

After Obama, a Hillary Clinton presidency will drive home the reality that white men are no longer in charge, and the United States government doesn’t care what they want, and that it is no longer their country and never will be again. That’s the harsh truth, and Hillary’s the one who will make that truth impossible to ignore.

I want soldiers across the country to grimace and feel a little bit sick every time they salute, knowing that she’s their commander-in-chief. I want men all over America to cry during the national anthem for all the wrong reasons. I want them to become angry and defiant. I want them to get misty during fireworks next July, not because their hearts are filled with Budweiser and Apple pie, but because they are bargaining with themselves.

“If only we’d done something sooner.”

I think most middle and lower class white American men know on some semi-conscious level that America is never going to be great again — at least not for them — but it is going to take Hillary Clinton’s cold, Reptilian resting bitch-face on a Presidential portrait to make them accept it and start working through the rest of the stages of grief, so they can finally move on. So they can finally start imagining a post-American future for themselves and begin developing tribal alternatives, before it is too late. Before there are too few of them left to matter.

Donald Trump will keep them in denial. He will make them believe everything is going to be OK. Everytime he shuts down some news-shrew or waves away some special interest group that’s trying to manipulate him — he seems like he might be “the one.” All of the guys who have just been waiting for the impossible-to-believe, seemingly unworkable changes that have happened to America over the past several generations to just “blow over” will perk up and believe that Donald Trump has finally come to be their daddy put everything back in order again. He’s going to whoop everyone who’s been misbehaving and get things running right again.

Maybe it will be when Hillary swears her oath of office, or maybe it will be after 8 years of disappointment, but sooner or later, white American men are going to have to deal with the fact that daddy isn’t coming home. This isn’t going to blow over, and it’s not going to fix itself.

I follow a lot of clothing and gear startups online. One of them, called Thirty Seconds Out, has this t-shirt, with a slogan that’s been stuck in my head as I’ve been writing this.

“No one is coming. It’s up to us.”

Daddy isn’t coming. No one is. Men in America can’t keep waiting for someone to come and stand up to feminists and race-baiters and social justice warriors for them, and then stand behind them, saying, “yeah, what he said.” They can’t keep waiting for some elected leader to put big businesses and banks and all of the scheming, swindling, greedy sellouts that run this country in their place. These people hate you, and they don’t care what you think or what you want. No matter what happens to you, they believe you have it coming, and if you don’t do anything about it and take control of your own life and destiny — you will deserve it.

Whatever happens to white American men — and all of the men who are unable or unwilling to benefit from rent-seeking identity politics — will be up to us.

…

That will be all I have to write about American politics until November.

I just wanted to put it out there and get it on record.

I’m going to go take a shower, and as a friend of mine has taken to saying, “return to my pile of bones.”